Emma Scheer
Under the term urbanization, most people understand the development of modern cities that present many opportunities. But that is not the only aspect of urbanization. As a result of rapidly urbanized regions, city authorities lack the capacity to fulfill all economic and social needs, which leads to the marginalization of a part of the population (Ooi & Phua, 2007).
Slums next to skyscrapers
Cities – urbanization as we know it
“The process whereby a society changes from a rural to an urban way of life. It refers also to the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas.” That is the definition of the term urbanization according to the National Library of Medicine (National Library of Medicine, 2022). The process of urbanization has been a trend in the past few centuries, and especially in the last few decades, and is going to further increase in the near future. Indeed, according to the UN World Urbanization Prospects, more than 4.3 billion people already live in urban areas and there are expected to be 7 billion in 2050. A factor that most probably influences this mass migration is, that living standards tend to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas. For example, the access to electricity, sanitation, drinking water and clean fuel is generally higher in urban areas than in rural areas (Ritchie & Roser, 2019). Of course, there is a variation to be observed across the different regions of the world. First and foremost, the levels of urbanization between different regions vary strongly. According to the report “Population Facts” of the Department of Economics and Social Affairs of the United Nations, in 2014, more than 80% of the Northern American population lived in urban regions, whereas this number was only 48% in Asia. A further trait of urban life that varies across the globe, is how the benefits of urban growth are distributed inside of these said regions. While an equal and sustainable repartition of these benefits, meaning an access to all basic necessities, is relatively well assured in developed countries, it remains a substantial challenge in many developing countries. As a matter of fact, these countries fail to assure the access to the basic necessities for a considerable part of their population (UN: Department of Social and Economic Affairs, 2014). They fail to reach the 11th goal of the Sustainable Development Goals: to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (United Nations, 2020).
The deficiencies of urbanization
Even though the living standards tend to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas because of the access to all the basic necessities, it still doesn’t mean that all urban dwellers actually have access to these necessities. One significant negative outcome of rapid urbanization is the formation of slums. As a matter of fact, almost 1-in-3 residents in urban areas, such as cities or towns, live in a slum household. A slum household is defined as “a group of individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following conditions: access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area, and durability of housing.” (Ritchie & Roser, 2019). This is a phenomenon often observed in developing countries, such as India and China. Indeed, in 2001, 60% of the world’s total slum inhabitants lived in Asia, which, at that point, was also the fastest urbanizing region of the world. In connection with this rapid urbanization, one of the principal problems causing the forming of slums is, that city authorities are unable to form a stable and sustainable link between the economic development of an urban area and its urban growth, and in consequence with its housing needs. Mainly, the government is unable to provide affordable housing for the urban dwellers with a low income. When housing falls short, slums form as a housing solution and people are forced to live in poverty, malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. However, insufficient financial resources are not the only factor impacting and intensifying the unavailability of affordable housing in urban areas in developing countries. The coordination of said resources plays an important role as well. Thereby, in developing countries, the nature of the government can have a significant impact on how an urban area is managed. For instance, if an urban government has the status of a provincial government, the coordination of the urban area in question, including the equal repartition of its resources, is much easier than in the case of a metropolitan government (Ooi & Phua, 2007). Thus, living in an urban area such as a city doesn’t necessarily guarantee access to all basic necessities.
The reach of urbanization
As mentioned earlier, urbanization doesn’t have a similar rate nor the same extent in every region of the world. Among other things, a factor that adds to this phenomenon is that, according to the United Nations, there isn’t one established definition of the term “urban”. Instead, each country uses its own definition of the word, which can vary significantly. In the United States, for instance, the term “urban place” refers to any locality where 2,500 people or more live. Meanwhile, in Peru the term refers to population centers with 100 or more dwellings (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021). In Switzerland, an urban center is defined as “a cluster of contiguous grid cells of one square kilometer with a density of at least 1,500 inhabitants per square kilometer and a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants overall” (OECD, 2020). Conforming to the swiss definition of an urban center, 73.92% of the Swiss population live in said urban centers (Trading Economics, 2022). Rural areas, housing the remainder of the population, are nonetheless extremely well connected to the surrounding urban areas, as well in the matter of the access to all basic needs as regarding to the actual physical connection, such as roads, railways or public transport. Therefore, entire neighborhoods or districts that don’t have access to one or more of the basic necessities, i.e. slums, cannot be found in Switzerland. That does not mean that there are no people living in poverty in Switzerland, because, as a matter of fact, even though Switzerland is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, still 8.5% of the Swiss population were affected by income poverty in 2020. Entire slums however have not formed in Switzerland, neither in urban nor in rural areas (Lloyd, 2016). All in all, living in rural areas, such as villages, doesn’t mean that one is completely disconnected from all sorts of urbanization. As defined earlier, urbanization doesn’t only refer to “the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas” but just as much to a societal change in the way of living, shifting from a rural to an urban way, without having to actually move from a rural area to an urban area (National Library of Medicine, 2022).
Conclusion
The aspects of urbanization that are known to the broad mass don’t cover all sides of this demographic development. Having access to all basic necessities doesn’t solely depend on the fact that one lives in an urban area rather than in a rural area. More importantly, the part of the world where one lives plays a major role. Because of rapid urbanization, especially developing countries struggle to provide all their habitants with access to all basic necessities. You could live in a village in the middle of nowhere and have no struggle whatsoever or at the same time in the middle of a city and still be completely isolated and disconnected from the essential things you need the most to survive.
References:
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